We show that, when allowing for general distributions of dividend growth in a Lucas economy with multiple "trees," idiosyncratic volatility will affect expected returns in ways that are not captured by the log linear approximation. We derive an exact expression for the risk premia for general...

We analyze how a benevolent, privately-informed government agency would optimally release information about the economy's growth rate when the agents hold heterogeneous beliefs. We model two types of agents: "trusting" and "distrustful." The former has a prior that is identical to that of the...

We show in a theoretical model that the expected excess return on any asset depends on its covariance not only with the market portfolio, but also with changes in the representative agent’s estimate. In the empirical specification, this ”estimation factor” is based on realized growth in...

This paper analyzes the expected life-time utility and the hedging demands in a Lucas (1978) economy, in which the dividend drift term is unknown and mean-reverting. An expression for the individual investor’s expected life-time utility in equilibrium is derived, and his hedging demand is...

We explore the relation between institutional quality, trust and stock-market participation. In our theoretical model, agents update their beliefs in a Bayesian manner based on observations on frauds and choose whether to invest in the stock market. The corresponding empirical model shows that...